DownStreet Art: Thursday, Aug. 31

DownStreet Art Thursday August 31, 5-8pm

DownStreet Art is a program of
MCLA's Berkshire Cultural Resource Center

DownStreet Art

Thursday Events:

Featured Event:
Imaginarium - Mural Unveiling

Center Street

DownStreet Art officially adds "Imaginarium" by artist Yu-Baba

'Imaginarium' is the newest mural commissioned by DownStreet Art for downtown North Adams. Painted by artist Yu-Baba (Yulia Puhach), it depicts a young woman interlaced among a lush cornucopia of colorful flowers, leaves and shrubbery. There is also a bewitching red fox intertwined around the young woman's head in a crown-like wreath. Together they form a powerful bond. The fantastically rendered foliage and flowers directly reference the richly varied flora of our Berkshires region. As does the red fox, a common species found in western Massachusetts.

Yu-Baba creates dynamic imagery focused on portraying strong, confident and beautiful female characters. The captivating young woman in "Imaginarium" exhibits independence, wisdom and physical strength. The fox symbolizes guidance, intelligence and camouflage. The fox protects the young woman from danger as well as she protects and nurtures the fox. Together they embark on an adventure inspired by their dreams and ideas.

Yu-Baba, a native of Belarus, is a Brooklyn-based muralist whose expressive and colorful work can be found across Europe and throughout the United States. Previously an architect of commercial and residential spaces, Puhach applies design thinking to her site-specific process. In addition to the many international mural commisions, Yu-Baba's paintings have also been exhibited in galleries worldwide. Her work has been featured in several books and magazines.

Music
under the Mohawk Marquee

Izzy Heltai writes contemporary folk music with a vibrancy and delicacy that calls out to the simplicity of traditional folk music. Heltai pairs his love of classic folk songs with a modern twist that gets stuck in your heart and creates a truly unique set of songs. His songs slow, smooth, bold and full of hope, Heltai’s songs are lyrically driven, melodically complex and pry deep into the depths of experiences we can all relate to. With every breath Heltai explores the fascination he has with sorrow, pain and the unknown; topics that most are quick to run away from.

Craig Hop & the Kosherburgers

6 – 8:00 pm

Craig Hop is an emcee/producer from Pittsfield, MA with a focus on lyricism and utilizing different genres from Rock to Alternative to Classical for his beats. Hop spent the majority of last year performing around the New England area after releasing his debut mixtape "Old Soul Revolution I" and is currently preparing to release his first studio album "EYEconic"

The Kosherburgers are a future funk duo based out of the 413. Made up of members Yonaton Kaufman and Cam Burgess and combining elements of live music and digital productions, the two have bridged genres into a new form of instrumental jam music.

Performances + Activities

Make Your Own Flipbook | Gallery 51

5 - 8:00 pm
Inspired by the "3 Second Stories" exhibit currently on view, Gallery 51 staff will guide participants in creating their own mini flip books. Supplies will be provided - all that is needed is a little imagination and story ideas. Open to all.

Seth Brown - Freestyle Rap

6:30pm Main St./Berkshire Bank Plaza

Seth Brown creates freestyle rap performances at each DownStreet Art Thursday. These interactive raps will be created spontaneously and originally, based largely on suggestions from people inhabiting the public space of the performance at the time of said performances. This will help foment engagement on multiple levels, through rhyme, through freestyle, and through direct interaction.

It’s the news of the streets, your views over beats, // Philosophy that’s audibly imbued with some heat, // And dudes may compete to get sold in the stores, // But hip-hop has ideas as its soul and its core.”

–Ham-STAR (Seth Brown)

Eco Loom Parklet Weaving Demo Makers’ Mill

5 - 8:00 pm

Maker' Mill will host a weaving demo in their eco-loom parklet on Main Street, across form the Mohawk Theatre. Bring some fabric or greenery to weave into one of our freestanding looms that make up the enclosure of the mini park. Materials will be available onsite as well. No experience necessary, just bring your enthusiasm to the participatory community project!

The Makers' Mill Eco-Loom parklet was created by local artists Kathline Carr and Jim Peters. The parklet invites anyone to drop in and weave a few welts into the parquet using a variety of available materials including paper, cloth and greenery.

This fun all-ages participatory art project requires no prior experience just a little curiosity and willingness to try something new. The parklet will continuously transform throughout the summer as people weave into the earth loom structure.

WCMA People's Library Reading Room Pop-Up on Main St

5-8:00 PM

WCMA People's Library pop-up Reading Room will bring a portion of their community-sourced collection of books growing in response to the question "What book is helping you understand the world right now?" The Reading Room librarians on site will also be collecting "unanswerable" questions from the community, inspired by the NYPL's #LetMeLibrarianThatForYou

5 – 6:15pm
Bike decorating table will be back with the helpful bike mechanics offering free tune ups at DownStreet Art until about 6:15 pm.

6:30pm
The Downtown Bike Around meets and leaves form the St. Anthony's parking lot at 6:30 pm and rides down Main Street and rides throughout downtown several times along the ride.

High Brow | Gravity Gallery | 44 Eagle St.

image courtesy of Rachelle Beaudin

5 - 8:00pm

Gravity Gallery is pleased to present "High Brow," a pop-up event. The event is a one-day participatory project in which Rachelle Beaudoin, a New Hampshire based artist, makes prints of people's eyebrows using Akua ink and paper. The process mimics brow waxing but results in a unique image of the participant's eyebrow. After giving a print to the participants, she will print 5 6 more and will print at least 100 people's eyebrows to make into a limited edition leather-bound artist book titled "High Brow."
Rachelle Beaudoin ia an artist who uses video, wearables, and performance to explore feminist issues and identity within popular culture.

Openings

Monuments to the People of North Adams
Design Lab, 49 Main St.

image: "Family," Jamie Diamond

5-8:00pm

"Monuments to the People of North Adams," will feature new photographs by this month's DSA Visiting Artist, Jamie Diamond. Diamond led a photography based workshop for young students ages 8-14. Combining street photography with video and sculptural concepts, Jamie Diamond facilitated an exploration of everyday people and places of North Adams. The results of this fun and interactive workshop will be exhibited alongside Diamond's own work.
"Monuments to the People of North Adams" examines the ongoing relationship between the residential community of North Adams and the impact the arrival of Mass MoCA, one of the largest Contemporary Art Museums in the US, has had on their lives. How well has the high temple of culture assimilated into the community within which it has settled?

Also on View

3 Second Stories | Gallery 51
51 Main St.

image: Tom Olson, "Flips"

5 - 8:00 pm
Currently on view through September 22nd, flipbook artist Tom Olson weaves tales of love, loss, and other investigations into the human psyche and the absurd by spending countless hours drawing hundreds of pages to arrive at a profound three seconds. Olson created his flip books in a bygone era of New York, before launching a successful career as a Washington, DC attorney. These recently discovered pieces, however, still feel just as fresh as they must have decades ago. This is the first showing of these small treasures and inclu video and print presentations of the flip books as well as a display of the original pieces.
This exhibit has been guest curated by Corwin Levi.

VOLUME | Berkshire Art Museum | 159 E. Main St.

5 - 7:00 pm

"VOLUME" - ESCULTURAS GRANDES, ESCULTURAS DE MESA, VESSELS, VOLUME IN MINIATURE
Two dozen artists exhibiting - from large indoor and outdoor sculptures to sculptures on pedestals to poetry and architectural models. Free Admission.

Pieces from Pictures | Outside | 10 Ashland Street

5 - 8:00 pm

On view thru September 7th at Outside gallery an installation of new work by Australian artistElizabeth Corkery."Pictures from Pieces" generates a symbiotic relationship between cinematic sequence and sculptural ensemble, using the gallery as a mechanism for installation to present ideas of duration and simultaneity. The piece builds on Corkery’s collective body of work that has explored the traditional boundaries between prints/architecture, surface/depth, image/matter, while making more explicit the relation between spatial perception, bodily motion and perceived passages of time.

On the Campus of MASS MoCA,Building 13

1315 MASS MoCA Way

Thomas Jackson | Cynthia-Reeves

5 - 6:00 pm
"Emergent Behavior," an exhibition of prints and site-based installation by San Francisco based artist Thomas Jackson will be on view at CYNTHIA-REEVES from August 26th - October 7th. The artist will be working on site August 22 - 25.

The hovering installations featured in Thomas Jackson's ongoing series of photographs are inspired by self-organizing, 'emergent" systems in nature such as termite mounds, swarming locusts, schooling fish and flocking birds. The images attempt to tap the mixture of fear and fascination that those phenomena tend to evoke, while creating an uneasy interplay between the natural and the manufactured, as well as the real and the imaginary. At the same time, each image is an experiment in juxtaposition. By constructing the installations from the unexpected materials and placing them where they seem least to belong, the artist aims to tweak the margins of our visual vocabulary, and to invite fresh interpretations of everyday things.

CYNTHIA-REEVES has initiated a new program emphasizing art-making and an open dialog between the artist and viewers, inviting artists to work on site and engage visitors in their artistic process.

Mara Superior | Ferrin Contemporary

5 - 6:00 pm
Ferrin Contemporary will have a select works on view featuring work by the 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow Award winner, Mara Superior. The work on display features themes of political social commentary and homage to history through her sculptures and collection platters

Ferrin Contemporary represents leading international contemporary artists whose primary medium is clay. Based in North Adams on the MASS MoCA campus, Ferrin Contemporary offers selected works for sale by represented artists, masterworks from private collections and curated exhibitions.

Mary Sipp Green | Artist Book Foundation

On view at The Artist Book Foundation's Loius and Susan Meisel Gallery, the work of landscape artist Mary Sipp-Green featuring recent giclee prints and giclee prints with pastels. The

The Artist Book Foundation publishes, shares, and preserves artist books offering the richest visual presentations and most informed narratives of artists’ lives and work.
Based in the bucolic Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, American painter Mary Sipp Green has a superlative ability to engage the viewer in the emotive atmosphere of her landscapes and seascapes. She achieves an ethereal, nuanced quality in her paintings that imparts a refined, inimitable serenity.

Sarah is a North Adams painter who has focused recently on ink drawings and watermedia. She is an internationally known painter and writer whose work has been exhibited in the US and abroad. She has been a recipient and finalist for many grants and fellowships.

Colegrove Park (Rain location: North Adams Movieplex in Steeple City Plaza.)8:30PM Movie in the Park: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Directed by Chris Columbus based on J.K. Rowling novel with a screenplay by Steve Kloves.
Staring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Richard Harris.

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